SEP public meetings: “Flint and the Grenfell fire: Social crimes against the working class”

26 July 2017

The Socialist Equality Part and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality are holding public meetings Thursday in Flint and Detroit, Michigan to review the experience of the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London. The callous indifference to the welfare of tenants and brutal disregard of safety are symptomatic of a decayed and diseased social order wracked by massive levels of social inequality.

The burning of the Grenfell Tower public housing apartment building in London, which killed at least 100 people, is a catastrophe created by neglect and outright criminality on the part of the ruling class in England. As in London, the residents of Flint as well as Detroit, Michigan are also the victims of social crimes motivated by the mad pursuit of profit by wealthy investors and their political representatives in both big business parties.

In cities throughout the world, modern-day capitalism is condemning the working class to impossible conditions and an early grave. Like the fire in Grenfell, the lead poisoning of Flint residents and the mass foreclosures and water shutoffs in Detroit are man-made disasters, products of decades of deregulation, austerity and soaring military spending that have led to a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top of society. The fight against these conditions must be based on the mobilization of the working class—black and white, native-born and immigrant, employed and unemployed—in a common struggle against capitalism and for socialism.